PAST IMPERFECT: Once upon a time in the new India

I’ve had a frustrating couple of weeks with research, trying to get hold of government records from the 1950s, on something as innocuous as improving the food supply. Even with helpful bureaucrats and kind archivists, the system most often denies the documenthungry historian what she needs to answer her historical questions.

Oddly enough, this sense of the state guarding what it has, thwarting individual desires and imaginations, was exactly what I found in one of the few files I did manage to look at, on austerity measures in Bombay State right after Independence. The newly independent Indian state, faced with food shortages and skyrocketing prices, continued the rationing system established by the colonial government during World War II, and austerity measures curbed consumption at celebrations and in restaurants. The government quite literally expected people to tighten belts, taking resources away where it gnawed the most: the stomachs of the nation.

In Bombay, a difficult restriction forbade feeding a gathering of more than 24 people using foodgrains — no wheat, rice, jowar, bajra, etc. Hosting ingenuity was stretched to its limits in expressing generosity on a plate, since nuts, dried fruits, potato chips, paan-supari and coconut were among the few items freely distributable at a gathering. Documents in the file I read showed exactly how strict the Bombay Government was. The Civil Supplies Department directed the nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha, organising a conference on elementary particles in 1950, to invite a limited number of delegates to each function or hold “garden parties instead of dinners.” An aggrieved Mr Pandit of Charni Road, refused permission to feed 120 people undhio on a sylvan suburban picnic in 1951, complained to the Ministry of Food itself, arguing that undhio contained no restricted items. To his indubitable chagrin, the Ministry severely noted that even unrestricted vegetables shouldn’t be fed to an unlimited number of people.

No elegant wedding cakes and rich mithai were distributed, since sugar and flour were rationed. Whole milk was reserved for infants and expectant or nursing mothers, so ice cream from real milk was criminal and mawa a matter of fantasy for several years in Bombay. The rules weren’t just for Indian citizens; only in 1952 were embassies and consulates allowed, once annually on their “National Days,” to feed more than 24 guests, but without foodgrains or milk. I couldn’t imagine what was harder for people; restricting celebratory meals on occasions big and small or the loss of smaller, more everyday indulgences.

People’s desires questioned the system, as they usually do, stomachs rumbling in displeasure even if not starvation. If bureaucrats made the rules, bureaucrats also questioned them in that file. One cited the joys of the mango season as a reason to allow fruit and fruit juice along with other dishes at restaurant meals. Another commented on the difficulty if the 24 allowed guests included the host family; in large households, family would have to be left out of celebrations in order to feed guests. Ultimately, what the state allowed people from its reserves was up to what bureaucrats decided based on both knowledge and personal preference.

Austerity measures didn’t immediately kill people, but they did frustrate, just as the lack of data does. The Right to Information Act has made it somewhat easier for civil society to ask for information, but government offices find ways to refuse and restrict answers, jealously holding on to the data that gives power. As for historians, the data we want is often destroyed, crumbling or lost, not considered important in the present day. Too little to work with and we are denied histories as satisfying as a golden mango juice after a summer lunch or a steaming, fragrant pot of undhio. The benefit of rationing and austerity measures were, undoubtedly, more equal access to food for millions; but the only result of a hard-toaccess, untraceable archive is dead silence about some aspects of the past.

Sanchia deSouza is a historian and writer. She grew up and lived 25 years in Mumbai. She is presently working towards a PhD at the University of Toronto

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